Don't wait until it's too late to build a data governance model

Most companies don't create a data governance model until there's a problem, and that's an awfully inconvenient time to start -- especially when you're dealing with big data. And when I say "most" companies, I truly mean a very large majority. While only about 15% of companies take a proactive approach to governing data, 85% do data governance reactively, says Anne Marie Smith, vice president of education and enterprise data governance specialist with data management consultancy EWSolutions Inc. There may be a good reason for that imbalance. When companies start collecting data internally on a small scale, they feel in control of their information. But as they grow and amass data from multiple sources inside and outside the company, they lose control over the quality, accuracy and completeness of all that data. At some point, someone within the company must have the wherewithal to halt the data free-for-all and apply some rules -- an action that may not be well received by employees. Indeed, data governance involves some ...